Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The Wind Blows Where it Chooses...

... and you hear the sound of it,
but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. –Jesus,
speaking to NicodemusJohn 3:1-17

I’m not sure we give Nicodemus enough credit. So
much is made of his meeting Jesus in the dark of night, hidden from the crowds
and his own people. Yet, everything about his demeanor suggests that he was not
afraid to be seen with Jesus. Even more, his willingness to engage Jesus with
questions shows that he held him in high regard and was sincerely interested in
learning more about Jesus and his teachings.

Nicodemus presses Jesus and
even respectfully debates him: “How can anyone be born after having
grown old?” he asks. “Can one enter a second time in the mother’s womb
and be born?” Now, here again, while Nicodemus is smart enough to realize that
Jesus is speaking metaphorically, he wants to know what Jesus means. Are we not
all products of the lives we have lived? Are we not shaped by our
repeated experiences, are we not formed by our educations and our works? Can
all of this be swept aside by the “blowing of the wind?” Can we become
un-formed, in order to be re-formed by the Spirit of God? All of these are
reasonable questions that we might ask if we were Nicodemus.

Jesus says we must be
born of the Spirit who will bear us, when we are born again into the realm of
God. So it’s reasonable to assume that there is some pain involved in our
transformation. How much of the old do we take with us when we are born again?
And, if we are born of the Spirit, don’t we get the sense that we do not escort
ourselves into God’s realm on our own? It’s reasonable to assume that we are
unable to “bear” ourselves in rebirth. We cannot do it on our own. There
must be another force at work, another force entirely. Only the Spirit can
usher us from this world of fixed realities to God’s realm of new
possibilities.

Of course Nicodemus is right: we cannot ever
go back and enter our mother’s wombs a second time. Our mothers cannot be
prevailed upon to bear us twice—although my mother often said she wished she
could; I might get it right the second time! So how do we begin our “gestation”
and re-birthing process? If we bear some of the responsibility of our renewal,
what part do we play?

Perhaps
John Wesley’s answer in his sermon on the subject says it all:It is the change wrought in the
whole soul by the almighty Spirit of God when it is "created anew in
Christ Jesus"; when it is "renewed after the image of God, in
righteousness and true holiness"; when
the love of the world is changed into the love of God; pride into humility;
passion into meekness; hatred, envy, malice, into a sincere, tender, love for
all mankind. In a word, it is that change whereby the earthly, sensual,
devilish mind is turned into the "mind which was in Christ Jesus."
This is the nature of the new birth: "So is every one that is born of the
Spirit." (http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/45/)